INTERLUDE: Concerning the possible wages of war!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2025

War of its several types: In Wednesday afternoon's report, with Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, we issued a tiny word of caution about the attractions of war.

We even quoted President Lincoln. "We must not be enemies," he once said. "We are not enemies, but friends."

Later, he "accepted" the onset of war—and that's the word he himself used in his astonishing Second Inaugural Address. But concerning the brutal war whose necessity he accepted, he said that we in the North were responsible for what had created it too—and that we must work to bind up the nation's wounds, "with malice toward none."

 "We must not be enemies," he had even said. "We are not enemies, but friends!"

When we composed that award-winning post, we didn't know that the shooting had already occurred in D.C.—the shooting which has taken one young woman's life.

Where possible, war is better avoided, we said. In this report in the New York Times, we start to learn about the possible wages of any resort to war, whether the war in question is actively made or is simply accepted:

National Guard Soldier Dies From Wounds in D.C. Shooting

One of the two National Guard troops shot in Washington died on Thursday, a day after officials said an Afghan man who was once part of an anti-Taliban force supported by the C.I.A. opened fire on the soldiers just a few blocks from the White House.

Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, succumbed to her injuries, President Trump told service members by video from his Mar-a-Lago resort and residence. “She was savagely attacked,” he said. “She’s dead.”

The other victim was identified as Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24. Both of them, members of the West Virginia National Guard, had been deployed to Washington as part of what Mr. Trump had described as a crackdown on crime in the capital.

And so on from there. By all accounts, someone drove across the country to commit this crime. His history is recorded here:

The suspect, who was in custody after being badly wounded during the attack, was identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal. The authorities said he had driven across the country from Washington State to carry out the attack. Overnight, F.B.I. agents searched an apartment complex in Bellingham, Wash., where the suspect had been living...

Mr. Lakanwal had entered the United States through Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era immigration program for Afghans fleeing the Taliban takeover. After he was identified as the suspect, the Trump administration vowed a sweeping re-examination of immigrants from 19 nations “of concern” including Afghanistan. The administration said it would re-examine “every Green Card” for immigrants from the countries upon which he had imposed a travel ban on in June, which also included Haiti and Venezuela.

Administration officials quickly criticized the Biden administration for allowing Mr. Lakanwal into the country in 2021 and said they were reviewing all asylum requests approved by the previous administration. Mr. Lakanwal, however, was granted asylum in April, after Mr. Trump’s return to office, according to three people with knowledge of the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Mr. Trump described the suspect as “nuts” and said there was “no vetting” by the Biden administration. Asked whether his administration had granted the asylum request, Mr. Trump deflected...

We include the apparent fact that the assailant was "vetted," and thereby granted asylum, in April of this year. We include that because it will inevitably become a messaging point in the pseudo-journalistic culture and propaganda war in which our struggling nation is now deeply engaged.

We humans! When war comes on, we split into tribes and then we start the name-calling. In Episode 2 of the PBS documentary, The American Revolution, Burns et al. described this process as it began to take form even way back then:

NARRATOR: The blood shed at Lexington and Concord had deepened the divisions among Americans from Georgia to New Hampshire.

"Loyalists," those who remained faithful to the Crown and hoped His Majesty's troops would soon restore law and order, dismissed those whose sympathies lay with the militiamen surrounding Boston as "rebels."

The "rebels" called themselves "Patriots"—or "Whigs," after British champions of constitutionally guaranteed rights—and vilified their Loyalist neighbors as "Tories."

[...]

ALAN TAYLOR: I think the greatest misconception about the American Revolution is that it was something that unified Americans and that it was just a war of Americans against the British. It leaves out the reality that it was a civil war among Americans.

Loyalists, Patriots, Tories oh my! In Episodes 1 and 2, the Burns film goes on, at substantial length, about the violence—including the horrific sexual violence—which took place when war drew on and we the people began to identify ourselves as the inevitable varieties of Us and Them.

On this morning's Fox & Friends, we saw Fox News Channel personnel wondering about the D.C. assailant's "radicalization" (or perhaps his "self-radicalization"). We saw no one raise the possibility of what is still called "mental illness" in other journalistic contexts. 

In a separate news report, the New York Times says this:

D.C. Shooting Suspect ‘Could Not Tolerate’ the Violence of His C.I.A.-Backed Unit in Afghanistan, a Childhood Friend Said

The Afghan refugee accused of shooting two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., fought in the late days of the U.S. war there as part of a “Zero Unit,” a paramilitary force that worked with the C.I.A., according to a person briefed on the investigation and an Afghan intelligence officer familiar with the matter. The units were known for their brutality and labeled “death squads” by human rights groups.

The suspect, identified by federal officials as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, grew up in a village in the eastern province of Khost. A childhood friend, who asked to be identified only as Muhammad because he feared Taliban reprisals, said that Mr. Lakanwal had suffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.

“He would tell me and our friends that their military operations were very tough, their job was very difficult, and they were under a lot of pressure,” Muhammad said.

The suspect received asylum from the U.S. government in April, according to three people with knowledge of the case who were not authorized to speak publicly.

How accurate will this first account turn out to be? We can't tell you that. That said, Wednesday's killing seems to be part of the wages of a military war, but a culture / journalistic / propaganda war can be a source of great danger too.

Tomorrow, we'll try to finish stating our view about the wages of sin visited upon this struggling nation by braindead "cable news" TV shows like Gutfeld! and The Five.

As we noted in Wednesday morning's report, one recent profile has said that Greg Gutfeld is "servile" to President Trump. That strikes us as a basically accurate claim, but the New York Times (and other Blue American orgs) refuses to discuss that fairly obvious state of affairs.

Also unreported and undiscussed? The dumbness and coarseness of these programs, and most remarkably the apparent misogyny which seems to suffuse the astonishing Gutfeld! program.

Needless to say, Greg Gutfeld has every right to support the president who he once strongly opposed. It would help if he could state his views in ways which weren't overtly clownlike.

That said:

In our view, he actually is pseudo-journalistically servile to the sitting president—and the New York Times has insisted on being deferential to the conduct of the Fox News Channel and to the behavior of Gutfeld himself.

We stand back today for the obvious reason. Also, let it be said that no one's assessments are perfect. Lincoln said that too!

No one's assessments are perfect! But President Lincoln had a strange idea—and he was the one who had  "accepted" the war in question. His radical moral conception was this:

Even in the face of vast disagreement, we must somehow strive to be friends!

Tomorrow: The worst profile of them all?